Q+A Panel Discussion - In response to Steven Joyce Interview

SUSAN Welcome to the
panel today. Political scientist Dr Claire Robinson from
Massey University, great to have you on with us this
year.

DR CLAIRE ROBINSON – Political
ScientistOh, thank you,
finally.

SUSAN One of our regulars, Matt
McCarten, Unite Union. And Fran O’Sullivan, New Zealand
Herald columnist, also a regular. I’ve just got to ask
this question – who thinks we’re going to win this Cup?
Because my nerves are frayed, like the rest of the
country.

MATT Yes. Yes, I’ve
following it for the last two races, and I think it’s in
the bag.

SUSAN We’ll have the port lead
in, which is the left lead in, from you, and we’ll win it,
right?

MATT Yeah.

SUSAN Are
you ladies feeling as
confident?

CLAIRE This is just— This is
like the Rugby World Cup jinx thing that’s going through
New Zealand at the moment. I think, you know, we lost the
Rugby World Cup constantly, and people started getting
really worried that because they were overconfident, that we
would lose, and I think that that’s exactly what we’re
seeing now. People are thinking, ‘Ooh, we were confident
last week, and now we’re not, and so we don’t want to
say anything.’

MATT We’re going to
have to ask all the Kiwis on the Oracle boat to get off so
we can win.

SUSAN Yeah, well, that would
help.

MATT There’s one American on
their boat. Half of them are New
Zealanders.

CLAIRE Yeah,
exactly.

SUSAN In an economic sense,
Fran, how do you commercialise— and let’s be optimistic
here and hope that the Cup does come back to New Zealand,
how do you commercialise it in a longer-term sense? Because
it’s hard to do. You think about Olympics, Sydney, yes,
you get the infrastructure, the roading, but it’s very
very hard to get a long-term benefit from it, isn’t
it?

FRAN O’SULLIVAN – NZ Herald
ColumnistYeah, I guess so,
but in many respects, for our boatbuilding industry, for our
technologies, what we do in the computer space, digital, all
around this, New Zealanders have come up with some terrific
innovations which have been picked up by other boat owners,
including, you know, making— building the boat for Larry
Ellison. So in that sense, I think I think there’s— you
know, it still puts New Zealand up there, right at the sharp
end.

SUSAN So those relationships get
created. You, Claire, though, would like to see the
Government take a bit more of a lead,
perhaps?

CLAIRE Yeah, I think that often
the tendency is to say— to throw the money at the
syndicate and say, ‘You go off and do it,’ but,
actually, if the Government’s being really strategic, it
would say, ‘Yes, in terms of the boatbuilding industry,
we’re going to get some return, in terms of tourism, but
what more can we do? What more can we leverage off this
event?’ So I think, yeah, putting some money—
strategically money in and resources into developing more of
the high-tech, more of the design-led industries associated
with the America’s Cup so that when the investors are
looking, when the investors are coming, then we can really
give them something to take away, apart from the
experience.

MATT We might like to change
the name of the boat as well and not call it old Emirates.
We’d call it Taxpayer Funded. Old
Team—

CLAIRE Well, there’s a logo on
it.

MATT There’s 36 million bucks on
there already.

SUSAN But that’s the
trouble with this thing – it’s such an expensive
campaign. If we could shift gear and get on to Chorus?
Fran, we heard Minister Steven Joyce talking about that and
a whole lot of misinformation, he says, but the charge is
– is this just another example of corporate welfare from
this government?

FRAN Well, it’s an
interesting topic, really, because the Government clearly
has put a lot of taxpayers’ money out there behind
ultrafast broadband, and, of course, Chorus has got the
lion’s share of that to do, you know, the guts of the
backbone in this country. I think it’ll end up as a
compromise. It won’t be quite so much coming off the
monthly broadband— sorry, copper rental that people are
currently paying. And somewhere in the middle, there’s a
threshold. But I do think the campaign is barking mad as
well. I mean, there is not a
tax—

MATT But it’s
effective.

FRAN Well, no, no, no, not
because it’s effective. You’re part of
it.

MATT I’m against your side,
absolutely. Come on, this is—

FRAN I
would—

MATT If a Labour government was
doing this, Fran and all her mates would be screaming about
picking winners, the status involving. One billion bucks to
an Australian-owned contractor, you know, and then they say,
‘Oh, the price is higher than we thought,’ and the
Cabinet goes, ‘We’ll set the price for you so you can
and so we can ship another 600 million
across.’

FRAN I think there’s a lot
of debate over the actual covert report, and we’re
starting to see people like Ross Patterson, the previous
telecoms commissioner, coming out. There’s a long way to
go in this one, and it’s very useful for certain PR
operators to round up the usual
suspects—

MATT There is a poll tax on
every internet user in this country of 12 bucks a month to
subside this private
enterprise—

SUSAN Whatever the facts,
information, misinformation – it’s confusing a) for
punters to follow, but, politically, it could be quite
damaging for the Government, because you have the perception
– Tiwai Point – is this just another example of, you
know, looking after bigger business?

CLAIRE
It is, too. But I think that the fundamental
issue with this is that price isn’t going to drive
behaviour, so the debate seems to have skewed round to, you
know, if copper is cheaper, then people will move to copper.
Actually, people are more than prepared to pay for quality
and speed if it’s there, so, really, it’s up to the
ultrafast broadband to prove that it is a good performer.
You know, if we were really worried about price, we’d
still be just all using landlines and dial-up, you know, and
we don’t. We really— So we do buy into really good
quality. People pay a lot for SKY; it’s much cheaper just
to watch free-to-air TV. So I think that people, you know,
once they do get to try…

SUSAN Well,
that’s the trouble. Once it comes to a street near you,
which is taking—

CLAIRE Yes, and when
is that?

SUSAN Well, exactly. I rang the
other day. It’s June next year, which is not very
helpful.

CLAIRE Yeah,
ridiculous.

SUSAN Mm.

MATT Well,
where my office is, it’s not going to be till 2017, and
that’s in a business part
of—

CLAIRE So I think that is the
bigger issue, you know, the slowness of the
rollout.

MATT Well, that’s the free
market at work, you see, and it doesn’t work. They should
just cut out the middle man and just do it themselves,
because that’s what they’re
doing—

FRAN Just put it in
themselves.

MATT They might as well do it
themselves instead of making money for your
mates.

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